Incinerator

Transformersby yo go re

For some reason, Michael Bay has a good relationship with the US military. That's why in Transformers, the soldiers are seen being transported in a CV-22 Osprey, rather than the more mundane Humvee. There were only three Ospreys in service in the Air Force at the time, and two of them appear in the movie - and it turns out one of them may have been a Decepticon!

Since the end of the war and the destruction of
Megatron, more and more individual Decepticons have been appearing on Earth, chasing rumors that their leader still lives. Most choose to remain hidden from the Autobots who have stayed behind to defend the world, but not Incinerator. He's actively hunting AllSpark-enhanced Autobots, reasoning that one of them must know where Megatron is. When he catches an Autobot, Incinerator takes him on a little ride, swooping and diving dangerously, hovering over canyons and volcanoes, and generally terrifying whatever information he can out of his victim. When he's done, he just finds the deepest hole he can and drops his helpless prey in.

So the name "Incinerator" was one of the working names for the character who eventually bacme Blackout - the big Decepticon helicopter. The personality described in the bio up there, with him intimidating captives into talking, is reminiscent of the G1 Combaticon heli Vortex - another working name for Blackout! There's just no getting away from him.

Incinerator is, as we said, is a CV-22 Osprey, which is a tiltrotor aircraft. That means that it takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like a regular airplane. It changes from a helicopter to an airplane?
This thing was a Transformer even before Hasbro got their hands on it! The toy does a good job of duplicating the real vehicle's weird proportions, and even has working landing gear. The nacelles turn just as they should, though with more than the real plane's 96° range of motion. Counting the rotors, Incinerator is 11" wide, 3¾" tall and 8¼" from tip to tail. The radar array on the tail of the plane is actually a push-button lever that makes the rotors spin.

Transformation is a bit more complex that it looks at a glance. The entire lower half of the aircraft splits to become legs, and you have to swing them around since the front of the feet form the nose. The rotors swing out to become the hands, of course, and as you fold down the cockpit to reveal his head, the canopy splits to form the chest. The head shown on the packaging has two individual eyes, while the toy's head has a single "visor" type eyeslit.

The figure has some vastly blatant kibble in the form of the unaltered body of the planeocopter hanging off his back. Seriously, other than the wings and the cockpit, the entire thing is there. However, there's a reason for that. Remember the lever that made the rotors spin in vehicle mode? It still works in robot mode. Yes, Incinerator has an incredibly complex gear system running through his body, that means even after the the shoulders, arms, elbows and wrists are repositioned during transformation, the gears maintain contact and still drive the action feature. That's some damn impressive engineering, right there, and if a bit of back-kibble is the price we have to pay for it, I can accept that.

Incinerator is part of the "AllSpark Power" subset,
which means he has patches of light blue scattered about his body. In this case, it's the shoulders and elbows, a bit on the arms and legs, a few dots on the head and the entirety of hs chest. Other than that, his limbs are purple, and all the planey parts are various shades of gray. The plastic used for his cockpit and eye slit is truly clear, with no color on the translucent plastic. It definitely makes for a unique look.

Of all the new movie-verse figures, Incinerator is the most Cybertron-y among them: his design looks like it would have fit in perfectly with that cartoon series. For whatever reason, he seems to be a real shelfwarmer, which is kind of a shme: he's nice fun, and that gear system is a real feat of toymaking. That said, it should be real easy for you to find one at the store. Give Incinerator a chance, and you might be pleasantly surprised.